Welcome to Gaia! ::

It seemed important to Alkaid that Tanzanite be allowed her words, uninterrupted. She was a good audience and always had been - be it for the strong, vibrant woman giving a speech for the masses or this small, ghostly version of her that seemed frail and uncertain. Alkaid listened because, in the end, she didn’t know what else she should do. It wasn’t a command but for all the loyalty she still held close to her heart, the words were nearly as powerful. It was why when that question passed her lips, her first instinct had simply been to say, No.

Her mouth pursed to speak the word into the air between them and then, surprising even herself, it faltered before it could be given life. Instead, she frowned, and looked up at the inky sky that hung overhead, unchanging as it had ever been.

“Hate is not the right word.”

In the days, or weeks (she didn’t really know), since Tanzanite had emerged from the crystal and come tumbling, quite literally, back into her life, Alkaid had needed to come to terms with her own humanity again. As Tanzanite began to recognize herself for her strengths and all of her faults, so did Alkaid. She was not the one reborn, the one learning to exist all over again, but the once General Queen still held the tethers of her soul so firmly in her hands - eh, hand - that her existence alone was enough to drag Kaia back to the surface of the shattered doll. She couldn’t have said if it was for the better and at times it felt like she was screaming to sink down again; hiding was safe and existence as anything but the cold, emotionless automaton was pain. She wanted to disappear.

She couldn’t, though.

Amber eyes slid sidelong to meet the guilty mask the woman wore. She felt her heart, or whatever she had left of it, ache at the sight of so much emotion written so cleanly across that patchwork face. Had it been anyone else, maybe she would have tried to figure out what level of physical touch was comforting and not weird for humans. She couldn’t, though, not when that unanswered question was hanging in the air between them.

“No. I never hated you but, sometimes, I regretted my decision.” For the Ascendant General, it felt like treason to speak the words aloud. She had never told a living soul, although, she supposed living was arguable in current company. “Maybe it wasn’t even really mine to make and I’ve just claimed the glory of the selfless sacrifice to make myself feel better. Would it have really mattered, in the end, if I had denied her?”

There had been no one in the world to answer that question until now, until right she found herself sitting next to the woman - the being - that had given her everything in the same moment that she had taken it way. She knew what had happened to her, what Tanzanite had done, as barely more than a few years at best but Alkaid felt what lay between them like the weight of a thousand lifetimes.

Alkaid nodded. That was it.

She didn’t know what else to do.

The Ascendant General’s life had been centered on this notion that she had accepted some great sacrifice for the greater good of their common goals, that when Tanzanite asked her if she was willing, it had mattered. To hear that it didn’t? Even if she had known, deep down, it still left her shocked to hear the words out loud. There were thoughts that begged to be considered, all of them doubting and wondering and questioning, and she ignored it all as she grasped at the fraying tethers of her calm. Alkaid’s existence belong to Metallia. Without her she was nothing.

“What does it matter? Will wondering what she’s going to do stop it from happening for you - for us?” After everything, she did not think so, even Tanzanite had just confirmed as much. Alkaid had been Metallia’s greatest voice, a servant faithful to a T. It was a zeal that grew brighter and more furious as the years ticked by and Kaia sank into a darkness beneath the sea of chaos that raged inside of her. As Alkaid, she had not cared what the world said or did. Metallia commanded and she followed it blindly, faithfully, without question or concern. Yet, had this woman not as well?

As Tanz struggled through her humanity, faced with fear and doubt, Alkaid found that she was forced to confront her own by principal. With Tanzanite, she felt kinship and with that kinship came the blossoming seeds of her humanity, turned up to the light for the first time in years.

“When you first disappeared, I spent a long time mourning. Not just you, but the fact that I could no longer sleep or dream, that food didn’t matter to me, that..” her eyes narrowed into the distance and then dropped to her lap as a soft voice passed her cracked lips. The thought on her tongue was unexpected and it hurt. “I spent a long time mourning that Khal treated me like I was broken.”

He had been angry, of course, and he had wanted the girl he had lost - he did not want the creature she had become. Idly, her fingertips raked through the earth at her side, digging pits with her dark-tipped nails. She wished she could feel the dust that settled on them.

“I was alone and confused and it seems silly in retrospect to have cared so much but I think I have just become more conditioned to it. I am more apathetic. Devoting myself to her and forgetting everything? It’s a lot easier than trying to pretend that I’m alive.”

She looked up at Tanzanite then and for the first time in what felt like years, she seemed uncertain of herself, or of the great war she served in so selflessly. Who would ever understand her, if not this woman?

“I think it’s a lot easier than pretending we have some kind of choice in this, Tanzanite.”

“Maybe he was,” there was humor in it, but she didn’t feign a smile for the other woman. “I didn’t blame him in the end.”

Who could blame someone for not understanding this half existence when the only person in the entire world, perhaps the entire universe, that could actually sympathize with what it felt like to be her was the one that had been missing for so many years. They were different creatures with the same core - only, it seemed one of them was making it through this with more of herself intact. Figuratively speaking, anyway.

She couldn’t feel the gentle hand in her own but she felt the pressure pulling on the plates of her arm as it weighed it down. It was enough to draw her eyes to where her fingers were stilled in the dirt beneath the black-tipped claws and Alkaid sat like that, silent and pensive, as Tanzanite’s words rolled over her. The hand flexed and twisted over, curiously tapping the dead ends of her fingertips against those claws in a gesture that was almost affectionate. In truth, she was thinking about how easily they would rip her apart - surely as easily as her magic could tear Tanzanite asunder.

When her eyes rose to meet Tanzanite’s again, she didn’t know what the youma Queen wanted her to say. She wanted to tell her that she wasn’t needed, that this war was endless and pointless and at this frustrating deadlock where soldiers were just dancing around each other in empty mimes.

“Then give me a reason to fight again, Tanzanite, because I don’t have one anymore. There’s no one to protect, no one to save, there’s no objective to be had or goal to pour myself into.” A frown pulled at her lips and set all of the plates of her face to chafing against one another, creating a low, hair splitting grind that would make most people’s skin crawl. Nevermind the gapes it created in her hollowed face. “You disappeared and there was nothing left to do but run patrols and pick off reckless, idiotic senshi. If I hadn’t found you, I wasn’t going to-”

The words died as she realized she felt guilty. This was a defense. She was explaining her actions to a woman that had once been her superior because she felt ashamed of her inaction in the time since she had left and it was refreshing, almost, to realize she could still feel that.

“I wasn’t going to keep doing this now that I’ve assured there is a mechanic to create more of my kind, I was just going to put myself into stasis until someone truly needed me again.

So if you need me, you're going to have to tell me why."

Alkaid waited with baited- well, it wasn’t with baited breath but it would have been, if she’d been able to draw it. She felt that same flicker of fire over her skin as Tanzanite’s words gathered her passion and narrowed it down to a pinpoint, pouring from her lips into a crescendo that she was as awed by now as she had ever been. It was the woman she had always known, the one that had put her loyalty to a purpose and given her life after it was stolen from her -

But then she finished her first grand speech and Alkaid felt the horror of it shock her to the core.

Fingers squeezed around Tanzanite’s so tightly that she felt the plates of her fingers shifting and threatening to burst at their seams. There was a real, tangible war waging inside of her head that she couldn’t stop. Alkaid had always been just in her work, as Tanzanite was claiming to no longer be, and without her goals she knew she was nothing. The precipice wasn’t just the one holding up her dangling legs but the one where Tanzanite held her, teetering and unstable, in her thoughts. At last, she let go of the woman’s fingers and settled both of her hands in her lap.

“You’re being emotional.”

It was short and curt. It seemed more stable than she felt inwardly but the impassive mask of her face showed its worth in the moment. She simply let it rest, blank.

“There’s no reason to kill everything, Tanzanite, and even if you did - then what? Do you really not believe that somewhere out there she would find something more, something greater?”

Deep down, Alkaid still wanted to believe that she could give Earth back to those who deserved it, even if it wasn’t the humans she had once assumed so innocent in this war. Naivety wasn’t the same as innocence and over the years, Alkaid had grown tired of their willful ignorance. A long time ago, someone had said something to her that had stuck - Earth did not belong to anyone.

Looking at Tanzanite, she still wanted to believe that Metallia had greater plans for the Earth than a wild need to consume it. Wanted to, but it was hard. Who was she to even guess at what such a being wanted? Who was Tanzanite, either? Questioning this woman was almost as hurtful to her own self preservation as questioning Metallia herself but where did she draw the line between them, these beings that meant everything to her?

She looked away again, out at the rift that stretched for desolate miles beyond them, at everything that had been consumed and swallowed whole by Metallia’s domain.

“I can’t promise to help you destroy everyone.”

It was so peculiar to her, the way Tanzanite’s emotions could just shift. Alkaid was a woman - a creature - plagued by a slowly hollowed soul that felt very little apart from a sense of loyalty and a deeply rooted need to serve. Darkness was easy, hunger and pain were easily harnessed and used to fuel her drive, but that grin on those dark lips and the playful wink (she thought it was a wink) made something in Alkaid ache with an almost wistful, jealous throb.

For all that she was a wicked, mangled thing, Tanzanite was as close to human as Alkaid had been near in a long, long time.

“Alright,” she said after a moment, quirking the corner of her cracked lips up just for Tanzanite’s benefit. “As long as you promise it’s only ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine nine…”

The raging storm within her dampened and she settled back, letting her spine meet the dark, dry earth. She looked like an angel fallen with her wings pinned at her hips and her bright dreads splayed through the dusty, gritty earth. This was her realm as much as it was Tanzanite’s and for all that it was dead and lost and forgotten, it suited her heart. Above them, the sky stretched hazy and dark, and she stared up into it as if it might suddenly change and show her all the answers to the questions she couldn’t pose.

At least Tanzanite had amended her words, she thought, even if they could never be unheard.

“They really are thankless and petulant, aren’t they?”

She dropped her gaze and looked up at the woman’s profile where it loomed beside her, studying her where she sat, silhouetted against the vast, empty nothing that stretched far into the distance distance.

“Do you think we’d even find anyone worth saving anymore?”

Alkaid listened to the youma woman while she lay there, flat on her back, staring up at that endless, inky sky. Nothing ever changed here and that suited her. For all the turmoil and prejudice that existed in the human realm, at least Metallia's domain was a constant, drab nothingness that resonated with her soul.

Well, constant, drab and unchanging as long as one didn't count the crystal pods incubating experimental beings.

"They could never take over so long as we were here."

It was hard to say how long she might live, harder still to fathom that the both of them could live to see the destruction of the Earth, but she wouldn't count it out. Alkaid knew that she had not aged a day since Tanzanite had destroyed her human flesh and as she dropped her gaze to that very woman next to her, the one that had been swallowed, chewed up, and spit back out like the world's biggest spitball, she suspected that she wouldn't be much different. Humans spent their whole lives waiting to grow old and here they were, watching them all turn frail and weak without them.

"Perhaps what the world needs is a stronger Negaverse. One that is focused and loyal."

Alkaid pushed herself up onto her elbows so that she no longer had to crane her neck to see that single, gray eye.

"A lot of why I've given up on Earth is because we have become a guard, not an army. We don't attack or plan or try to take back what is by all rights Hers, we just sit and wait while the humans grow in number and pour more and more of those reborn fools into our world." She frowned at the sound of Tanzanite's hounds, growling and fighting over Metallia only knew what somewhere below them.

"Soon, if we do nothing, the world will not be much better than your youma. Worse, because they don't listen when we speak."

Sacrifice, indeed.

Alkaid knew the meaning, she understood what the word meant to the General Queen perhaps better than most, but even her life was a far fetch from whatever strange, grueling existence the other woman had endured. For all of her wild, emotional outbursts, there were moments where she stared out in pensive solemnity and that, she thought, was the real sign of the woman Alkaid had been hoping to see.

"It's only here, in Destiny City, that we seem to fail. Europe, Asia, Africa - the far continents have had control over their lands for years but even their competent General Sovereigns have been incapable of squashing them."

It was peculiar to her and was a constant sort of reflection. Why were they so strong here? What made them so different? And if it was not the Senshi menace that was the outlier in the equation then the only finger she could find to point was at themselves.

"Our forces could use a dose of traditional methods," there was a tinge of hope in that voice as she sat back upright and turned her head fully to face the woman's profile, reading everything she could from that one eye. Her own were fierce of a sudden, so focused that she could feel the heat gathering in her starseed and leaking light up the cracks in her skin. "And all of the city could use a little reminder of who we are, Tanzanite, of who you are."